If you were White House counsel and someone from the White House political shop approached you, just before the midterm elections, about intervening with the Justice Department to help out a congressman from your party under criminal investigation, you would:
(a) Fire his ass on the spot.
(b) Drop kick him from the West Wing to a closet-sized office in the EEOB, never to be heard from again.
(c) Send a memo to everyone in the political office warning against any contacts with DOJ officials regarding any ongoing investigations.
(d) Get the deputy attorney general on the phone and see whether you could get him to publicly exonerate the congressman, then dutifully email back the political operative to report on how the call went.
If you answered (d), you’re qualified to be nominated to the Supreme Court.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.